Doctor Who: The Triple Knife

by Jenny T. Colgan

  13579 10 8642

  BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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  Copyright © Jenny T. Colgan 2018

  Jenny T. Colgan has asserted the right to be identified as the

  author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Doctor Who is a BBC Wales production for BBC One.

  Executive producers: Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin

  'Doctor Who', 'TARDIS' and the Doctor Who logo are trademarks of

  the British Broadcasting Corporation and are used under licence.

  First published by BBC Books in 2018

  www.penguin.co.uk

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  the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 785 94371 3

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The Triple Knife

  Into the Nowhere

  Picnic At Asgard

  All The Empty Towers

  A Long Way Down

  Acknowledgements

  Author Biography

  To Russell and Steven for guiding him safely home.

  Introduction

  Hello! It is a real privilege to have my stories brought together like this, particularly in Doctor Who's Year of the Woman. I'm truly thrilled to have them in one place and, as it's been quite nostalgic looking back at them, I thought I'd write a short introduction as to how they came about and my thought processes as I was writing them. NB: there will definitely be some spoilers, so I'd come back and read this at the end if I were you.

  The first story I wrote was 'Into the Nowhere'. I wrote it after my novel Dark Horizons came out and, like many new Doctor Who writers. I'd been thinking about it for so long that my instincts were to throw absolutely everything including the kitchen sink at it. The idea of the Nowhere planet came from Lost. My husband and I were addicted to the show and I was 100 per cent sure that the reason for the island was that it had the tree of forbidden fruit and at the end Jack and Kate were going to be Adam and Eve and restart the Earth. (I still like my idea better to be honest.) So 'Into the Nowhere' has gardens of Eden, snakes all over the place, some pretty cool skeleton slaves and huge writhing maggots. I really like Clara's ambivalence in the story - she was a new character when I wrote 'Into the Nowhere', and it was hard to see which side of the fence she was going to end up on. I also really like the end when the Doctor resets the weather. I had originally included a really disgusting part featuring a torture basement where people are made into skeletons, which didn't make the final cut but is still alluded to.

  There's a lovely scene in Frank Cottrell-Boyce's television episode In the Forest of the Night featuring the TARDIS covered with ivy which always makes me think of Clara's TARDIS covered in roses at the end of 'Into the Nowhere'. The only other time the worlds of my fiction and the show have collided was in The Boundless Sea, an audio drama I wrote for River Song in which she wields a sonic trowel. In 'The Husbands of River Song', the Doctor notices she has a sonic trowel (yay!) but instantly says that it's 'really embarrassing', which my children, let me tell you, found absolutely hilarious.

  After writing 'Into the Nowhere', The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who came along, in which the Doctor Who stories looked at issues that were then discussed by a scientist. I was asked to look at global warming and this became 'All the Empty Towers'. I wanted to set the story in Blackpool so that Clara would recognise it; or not, as the case may be.

  It was a Peter Capaldi story before the episodes had actually started airing, so I had to mostly guess what his personality would be. Gareth Roberts, who wrote The Caretaker, was incredibly helpful in describing how grumpy he was, certainly to begin with, and the main note was NO HUGGING, so I am very glad I got him to kiss a donkey. Also I liked the idea of a scary landlady - landladies are quite scary in my experience.

  (I ran into Peter at an event just after I'd completed my first David Tennant audio and he asked, 'Why aren't you writing for me?' and I replied, 'I have - you have a donkey companion!' which left him slightly nonplussed.)

  I wanted to set a scene in the Tower ballroom in Blackpool not realising, disappointingly, that the ballroom isn't up the tower at all. It's in the base. I recently got a chance to go there to watch my friend and fellow Doctor Who writer Susan Caiman kick ass in Strictly Come Dancing, and it is far bigger and grander than I imagined, or indeed managed to convey.

  'A Long Way Down' was originally a short illustrated adventure commissioned for the cover of the Time Trips collection. It was very exciting to see Ben Morris's brilliant illustrations bring it to life on the beautiful fold-out dust jacket of the original book. I needed the simplest of ideas - at one point, they got trapped in a game of marbles, but I decided to go even starker than that: the Doctor simply falls out of the TARDIS. The geraniums are of course a nod to Douglas Adams's petunias. Removed at a later stage, alas, was the fact that Clara was originally holding Seven's umbrella when she jumped. Also left out was Clara practising ballet in the TARDIS dance studio which looks out over nineteenth- century St Petersburg. I put the ballet studio back in In the Blood because I liked it so much.

  'The Triple Knife' is barely a Doctor Who story at all. I had really enjoyed the Series 9 two-parter about Ashildr, the immortal girl, but the scene when we learn she lost her children to the plague was standout for me.

  Nothing could be more dramatic than that. (I have three children, which probably has something to do with it.) The title refers to the fact that every time you have a child, a new sword of Damocles appears over your head: the awful horror that something might happen to them, which you then carry forever. And if you had to live forever, could it be borne? To wander endless millennia like Melmoth knowing all your children are dead feels like a torment beyond reason, and I wanted to explore those emotions.

  'Picnic at Asgard' is my favourite; I think it's my most strongly realised world, even though it's not remotely frightening, unless you're a furry genetically modified raccoon named after a Roman general. I love River and put in a massive plea for 'Picnic at Asgard' when I heard that Steven was doing 'The Singing Towers of Darillium' for Christmas 2015. It's just such a huge part of the Doctor's history. We discussed doing it with the Tenth Doctor but I was against that for the simple reason that when those two meet again, all it can be about is heartache and pain, whereas I wanted them in the middle of a relationship for a very specific reason: I wanted to talk about children. River is more or less a married woman. Whether she wanted them or not, it will, at the very least, have crossed her mind.

  I remember pitching it and it taking a little while and some to-ing and fro-ing before it was given the OK, and I was so very pleased when it was. I like this world, I like their relationship and I really like it when he wins an Olympic medal in skiing; it's sad and funny all at once. I've had more (gorgeous) fan art from this story than I have from anything else I've ever done. It's strange:

  whenever I sit on a panel someone always asks me if I don't feel constrained writing in a medium that has so much history and so many rules, and I can never quite explain how much writing Who has freed me up to write in
any direction, and experiment in so many different ways. I suppose that's the joy of the show in the end.

  Ooh, I just love writing Doctor Who, can't you tell? I am brimming over with excitement with the new stories and new types of stories Jodie Whittaker is going to bring to the show, as well as Chris Chibnall, the brilliant new showrunner. It is just a great time to be a woman in Who. And, as they well know, whenever they want me. I'll be there. With Meghan, tireless donkey companion, by my side.

  THE TRIPLE KNIFE

  August 9th 1348

  And now I will write in English even though it is a language that sticks in my troat. Trout. Throat. Alors. So. Done.

  A new journal for a new journey, as there is nothing to do now except watch the rocking of the bow and listen to Essie's astonishment - my little French enfant - at what these English consider acceptable to serve for diner.

  I sang for Johann:

  'Rough blows the North Wind... cruel blows the East...

  heavy blows the South Wind... we all fall BENEATH!'

  and he giggled as I tickled him under the arm, and Rue laughed because he always laughs when Johann laughs, and also he is simply one of those babies who likes to be happy; but Essie wasn't distracted at all, even as the boat pitched and rolled and we clung on to the rough wooden bench so hard I took a splinter.

  Instead she looked up, away from the food, with that look on her thin face and glint in her dark eyes that I recognised immediately, and I realised I was in for an 8-year-old's inquisition, which is as relentless as a witch hunt, and I know a bit about those.

  'Maman?'

  'Mm?'

  'Why did we leave Marseille again?'

  'In English, please.'

  She sighed crossly and repeated the question in that clunky, phlegm-ridden tongue I have painstakingly been teaching them all.

  'Well, I told you. We are going to the greatest city in the world! The largest city since Rome! For adventures.'

  Essie pouted. 'And why isn't Papa coming?'

  'Because Papa is going to look after the fishing nets all safely for us until we have had enough adventures, and then I will send you home,' I said, because it was true.

  I had... what is the good English phrase, there, I know it: I had sworn blind, never again, but... oh, but Tomas had been. Well.

  So handsome I never saw, and he such a quiet man, practically silent. Never asked a question. Never fussed me. No curiosity about why I had a crown in my locked chest, or why, if he or I woke for any reason in the night my sword would be in my hand and at his throat before you could say, 'It was just the thunder, Alys, get back to sleep!’

  As for the babies coming, the stupidity was all mine, and then there was Essie, and suddenly, from the second those tiny ageless eyes opened on my breast, sweetness and happiness was mine too, for the first time: a surprise, as I had always considered babies simply an irritating burden, like ringworm, or immortality, or frostbite.

  And so I told myself Johann and Rue were essential really; so they could protect and comfort each other when I had to leave them. As, one day I will. As I have to leave everyone as they turn curious, then suspicious, then horrified, then superstitious and finally murderous, and I think, well, my own children could not do that, but I have seen children do things to parents too, terrible things, because I have seen everything, and I know I could not bear it.

  And so we are leaving Tomas, so that even my quiet man cannot say one more time, it's astonishing, truly, is it not strange that three babies and twenty years have not marked you, no, not an inch, and does your hair not grow?

  August 10th

  The bark creaked. I paid a lot of gold for this tide. Thank goodness it turned early, before Tomas had even stirred. Essie disappeared, and I found her behind a heaped chest of shining oranges, bent over in concentration.

  'What are you doing now?'

  I have no fear of the other sailors as a woman alone: they are good enough men on the whole, and I made a point of standing on the prow first day and juggling knives. I pretended it was to entertain the littles, but when I threw them under the boson's legs and caught them without looking, glinting in the sun, I believe they got the message more or less.

  'Ugh,’ said Essie. 'They served pig gruel for breakfast.'

  'The food is different in Britain to France.'

  'You should tell them/ she said. 'Pig food is for pigs and please may we have some human food please thank you very much also tea.’

  She is obsessed with this new idea of tea. I smiled as the greasy-faced boy who acts as 'cook', if you could call it that, overheard this and grimaced and I distracted her quickly.

  'I liked it,’ said Johann quietly, hiding behind my skirts. It's true, he likes everything, and I caressed his curly head.

  'Well, you shall make a fine strong English lad,' I said and he smiled and stuck his tongue out at his sister.

  'Look, Maman!’ said Essie, ignoring her little brother.

  It was then I noticed the rat in the dim comer, bigger than a kitten. He was an ugly brute, but I was pleased to see him. When you can't find a rat: that's the time to worry about a ship.

  'Don't touch him,' I said. 'He might bite you.'

  She showed me a small piece she must have prised off the wheel of good Nederlander cheese I brought wrapped in a cloth.

  'He likes this.'

  'I expect he does. He likes fingers too.'

  'You won't eat me, will you Rose?' said Essie, leaning towards the rat, who hissed.

  'Rose?'

  'It's a pretty name.'

  I looked at her. 'I suppose it is. But don't let it get too close.'

  It was too late. The rat was already nibbling from her fingers because, one, Essie disobeys everything I ask her to do as a matter of principle, and two, she loves all creatures, animals, the weaker and the younger the better. She always has. I know I should teach her to stay away from the weak; to seek out the strong and close her ears to everyone else. I've seen it time and time again; it's the only way not to stumble by the wayside. But it doesn't matter; I can't change her. And in truth I don't want to. She is the very, very best of me.

  'There you are. Rose! Nice and delicious, yum yum yum!'

  I realised Essie was now giving her lunch to her rat. He didn't seem to like it much either.

  I glanced over to where a couple of the sailors were tossing Rue in the air to make him giggle. He's become quite the pet. Johann was watching enviously, and so I went over and grabbed him impulsively, clambered up the steps out of the musty below decks and onto the foredeck, where the spray was lighting the air, so fresh and salty it made you gasp, and the little bark was tossing down and up, but none of us gets sick easily; and instead I swung Johann round and round as he giggled and his little hands grabbed my shoulders and I twirled him into the netting, just as someone shouted, 'Land ahoy!'

  I stopped whirling Johann, who shouted, 'More, more!' and instead stopped and smelled the cool earth as we glided into the deep mouth of a river; someone said 'South of Hamp Town', and people on the wide, wide beaches stopped from what they were doing - gathering eels in their nets, the midshipman told me - and looked up. There were cooking fires dotted across the bone- white sand, and they looked like tiny stars.

  August 13th

  'Why is it so big, Maman? Who are all these people? They are dressed strangely.'

  'You have a lot of opinions for an 8-year-old.'

  'In Marseille, they have silk,' Essie had returned serenely, as we finally reached our lodgings, beating off the clamouring hands of the young grubby boys who had accosted us at every town shouting, 'Lodgings? Safe! Clean! Carry your bags,' despite the fact you could see the lice dance on them even as they spoke.

  'And also it is almost mostly definitely not raining at home,' said Essie.

  'Look up,’ I said.

  The houses fell against each other like weary travellers - many timbered, two-storeyed, collapsed drunks, shop signs creaking in the breeze. And above them were
the great stained-glass windows of the cathedral, their colours holding an exhausted Johann in its spell. Also, the longer they looked up at the great church, the less time they spent looking at the iron poles with the remains of traitors on them, and the crows that perched there.

  I have been to Trondheim, and to Paris, so I consider myself knowing in the ways of cities, but this place is different altogether; so vast, so filled with different people, so empty of anyone who would give us a second glance amongst the rowdy jugglers, the shouting sellers, the mendicants, the soldiers and the priests, of course. Always the priests.

  I kept all our clothes plain to avoid notice as we pushed through the throng, but I had enough gold sewn into the lining of my cloak to find us decent lodgings near the Moor's Gate, far enough away I thought from the stench of the tanneries, but I was wrong about that.

  Essie was quiet and tired after the long journey, and I felt nauseous myself. We were long enough in the cart, next to a French woman, Madame Bellice, who kept her nose buried in a bouquet of lavender that reminded me of Provence, and protested that the English stank of old milk. Johann burbled to her in French but she was indefatigably uncharmed, then Essie started being rude about her in English and required a scolding I did not truly mean and kept smirking through.

  It served me right when I turned up to our new lodgings and found she was lodged just across the street. I don't care. I don't make friends.

  The road bustled full of people making their way to or from the smarter merchants' homes, leading donkeys laden with meat, fish I could already tell would not be welcome, spices I had not smelled in years and bolts of cloth, all colours. I had to tug Johann away from the spectacle that was simply daily city life.

  We entered our new home, which had straw, clean enough, on the ground; a clear fireplace and a bed for us all and a cot for the baby. I have seen rather worse.